The Westchester, NY Journal-News made the deliberate decision to gather up information on gun owners in its region and map where those citizens live. Those citizens have broken no laws; if they had, many of them would not be legally allowed to own a firearm. After spying on its community, the Journal-News then took the step of publishing that information for everyone in the world, including the worst of the worst of society who have been freed by lax, liberal criminal justice policies, to find and study and target the families who live at those addresses, or target their unarmed neighbors.

Sauce for the goose, as they say. The blog For What It’s Worth has gathered and published contact information for all involved in the Journal-News’ decision to expose the law-abiding gun owners in its area (its map does not show which homes belong to armed criminals, of course). The two main culprits are the paper’s publisher, Janet Hasson, and the reporter on the story, Dwight R. Worley.

Their information is posted along with much more information at the link. Readers here have determined that Mr. Worley is himself a legal gun owner. He is perfectly free to put himself and his personal information on any map he wishes, but he had no right to prove that one of gun owners’ worst fears would come true: That government registration information would eventually be used against them.

The Freedom of Information Act, which the Journal-News used to compile its gun owner information, was intended to help journalists and citizens hold our government accountable by making their decisions and the information they use to reach those decisions subject to public scrutiny. The Journal-News has turned FOIA on its head and turned a weapon intended to be used by citizens into a weapon wielded against citizens.

Look at it this way: Would the Journal-News endeavor to find out where the illegal aliens reside within their community, and map that information? Or drug dealiers? Of course not. In fact, because they live outside the law, no illegal alien or career criminal is even subject to any of the Journal-News‘ irresponsible scrutiny. Their information war exclusively targets law-abiding citizens by design, and their wide dragnet has surely snared some people who have armed themselves because someone else is stalking them or menacing them in some way. If this is how journalists intend to use FOIA going forward, then FOIA should be re-thought entirely. Clearly, some journalists will simply misuse the law, just like criminals and lawyers often do.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

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1.
David W

This is like the homosexual-rights people in California finding out who supported Prop 8 and then harassing them. This is the typical left wing media using “fascist” tactics to harm those who disagree with their fellow leftists. Those who are concerned about the government using data to attack its citizens should be very concerned.

And for those that believe that those background checks cannot come back to haunt you please take note. In my state they are required for any firearm sale by a licensed dealer. Registration is not required for confiscation. A bg check is all thats needed.

Even worse, the information the Journal-News published is not accurate or up-to-date. I know of at least one published name there that refers to someone who has been dead for several years, and whose guns were disposed of by his widow after his death.

If the Journal-News published information which included the names and addresses of expired or lapsed permits, that potentially places people at those addresses—whether they are the people named in those permits or not—at greater risk of break-in by someone looking to steal a weapon, or, possibly, some form of inappropriate behavior by some obnoxiously officious anti-gun neighbor.

The good news is that the people in these neighborhoods either know or don’t know whether or not their neighborhoods have been rampant war zones, with occasional shots being fired, for the last few weeks, months, years, and decades. Thus, what the Journal-News has done is shown the banners and confiscators that gun owners *already* live among them, and that there has probably been no real issue–and that therefore only the anti-gun folks own biases will cause neighbirhood issues, because the guns have peacefully been in those neighborhoods for some time, perhaps before others ever moved in–and most assuredly to a near-universal lack of ill-effects.

I do not approve of the Journal-News did, but the people in the mapped areas who do not like guns are probably going to have problems proving ownership of guns automatically causes problems for the surrounding environs, because an experiment has already been ran, and the map is the proof. 99.999% of the time (or maybe even a higher percentage) there simply is no issue, and thus bans are a hysteria-driven action.